Traveller previews done, game imminent

The final preview of the new Traveller rulebook is up at Mongoose Publishing’s website, giving fans an early peek at a Scout ship. Despite the company’s aborted attempt at an in-house printing facility, the new edition arrives at the end of the month, so it’s almost time to try out the latest incarnation of the RPG that has had more versions than any other (by my unofficial count, at least). Due to the line on the Character Generation Checklist that prompts players to “Roll for survival on this career”, it sounds like Mongoose was trying for the spirit of the original character creation process, wherein a character could die before ever being played (which seems ridiculous when you first hear it, but not everyone has a happy backstory, ya know?). Mongoose promises to employ the Traveller system to power updates of titles that include Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, and Starship Troopers, so fans of those lines may want to get onboard for this month’s release as well. We’ll soon see how well the new version is received, and whether third party support will rally – either under its OGL or more defined Traveller Logo license.

If you read the character generation preview beyond the first page, you’ll see that the Survival rolls don’t kill you – unless you use the optional Iron Man rule, described on the last page.

It looks like the rules stick very close to classic Traveler, down to using the same character used in the classic game in the example of character generation. The modernizations seem to be small – no character death during character creation, using the lifepath as an opportunity to create pre-existing connections between PCs, and making sure that characters are more well-rounded with regards to skills.

I also like how the character sheet includes damage tracks for each of the attributes.

Too bad that the art is worse than in the old starter set with which I first experienced Traveler. Specifically the example character portrait – it’s the same Jamison, except drawn by a fan instead of a pro.

Alright folks. Mongoose has been in business how many years now and they still can’t seem to get quality under control? Its either atrociously bad editing, amateurish artwork or bindings that disintegrate after only a few uses. How much longer are you going to keep sinking money into a company for sub-par products?